Belle, Simon
- Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Conducting morphometric measurements on subfossil chironomid head capsules will be key to uncovering the long-term mechanisms of body size variations of aquatic invertebrates. However, the wider use of subfossil chironomids in phenotypic plasticity reconstructions has been limited by three main methodological gaps regarding the influence of laboratory procedures on the size of subfossil chironomids. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the most used chemical pre-treatments and mounting media on chironomid head capsule lengths and to quantify the influence of storage time on chironomid head capsule measurements. Results showed no effect of mounting media and chemical pre-treatments on chironomid head capsule lengths and that measurements did not significantly change with increasing slide storage time, after 1 and 5 months. These results therefore indicate that it is possible to re-examine existing slide collections regardless of laboratory procedures, mounting media, and storage time. Furthermore, since measurements taken from HC mounted in water did not differ from other procedures, HC may be re-used after morphometric measurements for stable isotope analyses. Combining these two promising approaches will enable us to disentangle the influence of food source and temperature variations on chironomid body size. Filling these three methodological gaps will allow us to make reliable inferences about long-term changes in phenotypic plasticity using subfossil chironomids, thus contributing to better predictions of future climate-related changes in body size of aquatic invertebrates.
Keywords
Chironomidae; Paleolimnology
Published in
Journal of Paleolimnology
2025
Publisher: SPRINGER
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Environmental Sciences
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-025-00366-y
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142512